Re: WIP: to_char, support for EEEE format

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Brendan Jurd<direvus@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/7/30 Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com>:
>> 2009/7/29 Brendan Jurd <direvus@gmail.com>:
>>> I don't see any problem with extending this to allow up to 3 exponent
>>> digits ... Pavel, any comment?
>>
>> I am not sure - this function should be used in reports witl fixed
>> line's width. And I am thinking, so it's should be problem - I prefer
>> showing some #.### chars. It's clean signal, so some is wrong, but it
>> doesn't break generating long run reports (like exception in Oracle)
>> and doesn't broke formating like 3 exponent digits.
>
> Hmm.  For what it's worth, I think Pavel makes a good point about the
> number of exponent digits -- a large chunk of the use case for numeric
> formatting would be fixed-width reporting.
>
> Limiting to two exponent digits also has the nice property that the
> output always matches the length of the format pattern:
>
> 9.99EEEE
> 1.23E+02
>
> I don't know whether being able to represent 3-digit exponents
> outweighs the value of reliable fixed-width output.  Would anyone else
> care to throw in their opinion?  However we end up handling it, we
> will probably need to flesh out the docs regarding this.

Well, what if my whole database is full of numbers with three and four
digit exponents?  Do I have an out, or am I just hosed?

Apologies if this is a stupid question, I haven't read this patch.

...Robert